Toward an Embodied Virtual Archaeology

Lara Croft is an unavoidable cultural figure for women in archaeology. Some choose to feel empowered by this representation of an ass-kickin’ buxom femme who slings guns instead of shovels. She’s an arguably harmless fantastic character and frankly I’m a little bored of being irritated at this representation of my profession and at people who remark about either Indiana Jones or Lara Croft while talking to me about archaeology. I’m nearly loathe to bring her up at all, except for this:

A new iteration of Tomb Raider is coming out on the Wii. While this likely means that you can smash pots/natives/steal artifacts using the new controller, the first thing I thought of was digging!

While there have been attempts at VR digging (some of which I should be writing about right now in my field statement, argh), the Wii controller is versatile, relatively inexpensive, becoming pervasive, and can do most of the basic motions associated with field archaeology:

1) troweling
2) shoveling
3) sifting
4) pick-axing
5) drawing

It would be a lovely educational tool and would guide people through the some of the physicality of archaeology, something that is sorely lacking in most virtual excavation projects and games. Obviously I need to write a grant proposal that includes funding for purchasing a Wii, right?